Medical professionals frequently need to monitor various parameters to assess and monitor the health of their patients. As such, patient monitoring devices may be utilized in order to monitor various patient-related parameters.
Frequently, a patient will be moved from one department or unit of a hospital or other medical facility to another department or unit for continued treatment. For example, a patient may move from the emergency room to the operating room to a recovery unit and, in turn, to a post-op unit during the course of several days. Some patient monitoring devices are capable of measuring the patient-related parameters that are of importance in each or a number of the different departments or units of a hospital or other medical facility. In some instances, the same patient monitoring device may therefore remain with the patient as the patient moves throughout a hospital. However, the actual patient-related parameters that are of interest may vary from one department or unit to another. Thus, the patient monitoring devices must generally be manually reconfigured in conjunction with the transfer of a patient from one department or unit to another, thereby resulting in additional work on behalf of the medical professionals attending to the patient.
Some patient monitoring devices are also capable of being attached to different body parts and correspondingly monitoring different patient-related parameters. For example, the same patient monitoring device may first be attached to a patient's upper arm and subsequently attached to the leg of the patient. However, the patient-related parameters that are of interest may vary depending upon the body part upon which the patient monitoring device is attached. Thus, the patient monitoring devices must generally be manually reconfigured in conjunction with the body part to which the patient monitoring device is attached, thereby similarly resulting in additional work on behalf of the medical professionals attending to the patient.